As Long As He Needs Me
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: ****Nancy reflects on her reasons for staying with Bill despite everything he puts her through, and his violent outbursts. She reflects on her childhood, and how she and Bill first met and fell in love. This is my own interpretation of Nancy's backstory, and goes some way to explain why she still stays with Bill and puts up with everything he throws at her.


**As Long As He Needs Me**

I know what people think of me for sticking with Bill after everything he's put me through, what they think of him after everything he's done, but they don't know him like I do. Yes he's always been a bit of a rogue, a pick pocket and a thief, but he' not a bad man at heart and things haven't always been the way that they are now.

Do people honestly believe that I would have stayed with him this long if he'd always been the way he is now? He hasn't always been short tempered, and there was once a time when he would never have thought to raise his fist to me – now that seems to be his answer to everything, but that isn't the Bill I know and love, not really. The man he is now is the man he has become since we first met, and I first fell in love.

When I first met him I was little more than a girl. I was fifteen and had run away from home, to escape from my abusive father. Terrified and alone I spent days wondering London's streets trying to remain anonymous and elusive from the father I felt sure would by now be looking for me.

I spent a week sleeping rough. I stole a wallet and a silk handkerchief which I sold for a loaf of bread and a bottle of gin, and it was at the end of that first week that I first sold my soul for the price of a room for the night.

It was then I knew that there was no going back. When Bill finally found me I'd only been living alone in London for just over a month, but already I was half staved. He was older than me, but was gentle and kind, and he took me under his wing. He offered me a home, and I will never forget my own happiness and the sense of security which swelled within me when he first took me into his home.

As I stepped through the door for the first time it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness of the place, and it was then that I first noticed the small black and white pup sleeping on a pile of rags next to a blazing fire. Bill told me that the dogs name was Bulzeye, and proceeded to explain how he'd saved the pup's life when he'd brought him with his final shilling from a drunkard who he'd discovered trying to drown the tiny dog in the Thames.

To anyone hearing this story now it probably seems to be bordering on the unbelievable, but that was just the sort of man Bill was back then.

Don't get me wrong, our early life together was very far from perfect. I was forced to continue to sell my body to some of the lowest of London society imaginable, just to provide for myself and Bill. It was a revolting and deprecating task, but a necessary one in order to survive. But Bill in his kindly custom made sure that it was worth my while, and as the months went by there became little doubt in my mind over his growing love for me.

We lived together in relative happiness for a little over a year before Bill because dangerously ill with a fever, and I knew in my heart that things would never be the same again. Venereal disease, the doctor's called it. He became barely more than skin and bones in little more than a matter of weeks, and his face swelled with infected pustules. I continued to work all the hours I could bring myself to tear myself away from Bill's bedside, and with what little money I was able to scrape together I brought bread, and mutton, and what vegetables I could afford, which I boiled down into a weak broth in order to try and build his strength up, but I could never get him to take more than a small mouthful of food at a time.

They treated him with mercury, which made him almost as ill as the disease itself, and told me that they didn't know whether or not he was going to survive.

I nursed him through the worst of it however, and as the weeks progressed into months he gradually started to show some signs of improvement , but the disease had taken its toll on his body, and had damaged his brain. Bill was forever changed, and it didn't take me long after that to realise that things would never be the same again.

He became depressed and turned to drink in order to try and cope with the ordeal of what he'd been through, and to come to terms with the fact that he would never regain the physicality of before. He could never accept that the disease had permanently weakened him, and unfortunately the drink only fuelled a by now fast emerging temper, fuelled by his frustration and rage.

The first time he hit me I tried to convince myself that it was just a one off, that he'd never do it again, but somehow I knew in my heart that this wasn't the case. The doctor's had warned me of what the disease could do, and the first time I stood by helplessly and was forced to watch him strike Bulzeye – the dog who's life he'd saved and so loved cherished by him – in a fit of rage I knew I'd lost my Bill forever.

And yet despite everything he's since put me through I cannot bring myself to leave him. I can't forget what he has done for me, how he took me in and kept me safe when nobody else would, and how we once shared a love I hoped might last forever. Bill now needs me more than I ever needed him, he taught me to take care of myself in the world, but without me how he would not be able to cope. I owe it to him to stay, and despite everything I still love him... and deep down I know that he still loved me too.

It is for this reason that I have resolved to stay, no matter what, for as long as my Bill needs me.


End file.
